It was in 2003 when I seriously decided to try and play flamenco guitar.I had not touched the instrument for about 5 years. I was terribly rusty. I thought obtaining a flamenco guitar would be a good place to start. So, I purchased a beginner grade Manuel Rodriguez for $400. Later on I realized that this was unnecessary, but that's another story. Panaderos is such a lovely piece and it contains very essential aspects of flamenco guitar: clockwork rhythm, two fundamental rasgueado patterns, picado, pulgar etc. I found acceptably accurate tabs on the web and started practising. As a trained classical guitarist, I started playing very slowly with the metronome, incrementally raising the speed. It sounded good. However, after working on it for about a month (1-2 hours a day), I was unable to play the piece at full tempo. I was completely stuck at around 80 bpm. Beyond that my playing was unpleasant, the tempo would fluctuate and I would frequently miss notes. I kept thinking "Where did I go wrong? I did everything my professor (one of Segovia's students by the way) told me to do!" I kept watching Paco de Lucia to figure out what he was doing to achieve that speed and accuracy. I was about to conclude my quest by declaring lack of talent on my part. Then I thought: "Could flamenco guitar require a DIFFERENT technique than classical guitar?" Here's me as a young classical player (don't laugh :-):

Danza Negra by Antonio Lauro Learning classical guitar I was frequently told by conservatory teachers that flamenco players did not pay attention to technique or tone or articulation blah blah blah… So, as a rule classical training gave you the best possible technique. Well, as it turns out that was completely wrong. Despite many overlapping aspects, flamenco guitar DOES have a a technique of it's own and one needs to understand that and make the necessary adjustments to be able to play flamenco pieces. Besides, tone and articulation are as important in flamenco as they are in classical guitar. Watching Paco de Lucia, Paco Pena, and Manolo Sanlucar on old VHS tapes and DVD's I made my first discovery that changed everything for me:

1-FREE STROKE I always thought flamenco players played melodic lines using rest stroke picado (apoyando). So, I was trying to play everything with rest stroke picado. Wrong! The fact of the matter is that flamenco guitar is played MAINLY with free stroke and they use rest stroke picado only when doing longer runs or if they want to emphasize certain notes. So, the opening melody of Panaderos needs to be played with free stroke.But, that is not all. Here is the second significant discovery:

2- THUMB REST STROKE In flamenco the thumb is used MAINLY as rest stroke. Why? 1- Thumb rest stroke provides an ANCHOR while your fingers move freely "tickling" the trebles. This way, your hand doesn't shake while playing fast passages. 2- By virtue of their special build, flamenco guitars respond better in terms of sound to thumb rest stroke. Simply put, thumb rest stroke will give you the proper buzzy flamenco sound. Alright. Now, here is the kicker:YOU NEED TO PLAY THUMB REST STROKE IN COMBINATION WITH FINGER FREE STROKE Yes! Once I started implementing this new technique, Panaderos started to take off. It was awesome not having to play every single damn note with rest stroke picado and this way, especially with the thumb rest stroke, the piece sounded more flamenco. Then I also realized that flamenco guitar incorporated 2 different hand-wrist positions. The first one used for all of the above and the second for FLAMENCO PULGAR sequences…Let me talk about that some other time…